A shark's tale

New home: The Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach is the only aquarium on the West Coast with a bull shark on display. COURTESY OF THE AQUARIUM OF THE PACIFIC

WEEKLY NEWS QUIZ:

1.There was a toxic spill on the space station this week. What spilled?

2.Scientists say they might be able to resolve the debate over whether climate change is making hurricanes stronger and more frequent by studying oxygen taken from what?

3. What did the Cassini spacecraft just discover at Saturn?

4. Scientists found the 3.3 million year-old skeleton of what in Ethiopia?

5.The "on-off" switch for what human emotion was found in the brain by researchers?

WHO IS IT?

Gary Moeser of Mission Viejo was the first to identify last week's mystery guest as Werner Heisenberg, the German physicist who won the 1932 Nobel Prize for his contributions to the field of quantum mechanics. The first person to identify today's guest wins the paperback book, "The Best Science and Nature Writing: 2006" E-mail answers to grobbins@ocregister.com

QUIZ ANSWERS

1.Potassium hydoxide

2.Tree rings

3.A never-before seen ring

4.A human child

5.Fear

Source: Reuters, Associated Press, The New York Times

The Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach recently added a female bull shark to its public collection, making it the only aquarium on the West Coast - and one of only three in the country - to have the species on display.

A Texas collector caught the shark as a pup last year in the Gulf of Mexico. The animal was later sent to the aquarium, where it was kept in a secluded area for about a year so that it could acclimate and grow.

We talked to assistant curator Steve Blair about the aquarium's newest big-name attraction.

Q: You could have chosen any species of shark to display. Why choose the bull shark?

A: This species is unique. It gets along well with the large sharks and rays that we already have in 'Shark Lagoon,' a 90,000 gallon exhibit that already has a lot of animals.

We also chose the bull shark because it can swim in fresh water and salt water, an ability that's not displayed by many other animals. And they're incredibly fast.

Q: What do you like about the bull shark?

A: With her stocky, charger-shape, wide, short snout, and tall first dorsal she certainly is aptly named. But she also has this sort of metallic gray skin that's very distinctive in the water. And she will become much larger. This shark will grow to an average adult size of about 8 feet in length and eventually weight about 300 pounds. She's very beautiful.

Q: Why are there so few bull sharks in captivity?

A: The bull shark is known to prey on other sharks and rays. And it's an unpredictable animal - that's its hallmark. But we've put her in a exhibit with larger sharks and rays, which is a more suitable environment.

We've had safety divers in the water with her, and we plan to have volunteer divers in the exhibit, too. We have safety procedures in place to make sure that everything goes well.

Q: Do you expect the shark to be much of an attendance draw?

A:The bull shark is now our ambassador to talk about shark conservation. Very few sharks attack humans around the world. But millions of sharks are killed by people each year. This is something we want people to know.

The biggest killer of sharks is for shark fin soup - the demand in some countries for shark fins is so strong it is fueling an illegal trade in fins and the killing of sharks by the millions all over the world - something we want people to know.

LAUNCH UPDATE: Boeing-Huntington Beach says that this weekend's scheduled launch of a Navstar Global Positioning System satellite aboard one of its Delta II rockets has been delayed until Monday. The launch is now scheduled for a 13-minute window that begins at 2:50 p.m. EDT. The company also says its launch of the STEREO science satellite has been pushed to October to give engineers more time to resolve technical issues. Updates: www.boeing.com

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